So it came about that the ‘master of the work’ received from the many workers statuary of varying excellence, and gave it all its place in the Cathedral. Among the thousands of sculptures at Chartres or Reims many are of very inferior merit. Many a chef-d’œuvre, on the other hand, on which the pious sculptor has lavished all his skill is hidden in inaccessible nooks, or scarcely visible in the loftiest part of a building, thus showing clearly the motive of devotion which inspired the worker.
It was in this sense, then, that the Cathedral of Chartres was built ‘by universal suffrage,’ as Lowell put it, just as the entire population from the Coquet to the Tees, headed by the Earl of Northumberland, rose up to build the Cathedral of Durham. The nearest modern analogy to such enthusiasm is to be found in the history of Christianity in Uganda or in the building of the church at Swindon by the united, unpaid efforts of the working men of that town. It was the living faith of the people, not the mere feudal requisition of their labour by the bishops (corvées) which created the mediæval temples, faith strong and simple as that which inspired Sabine of Steinbach or her who laid the last stone of the Dom of Köln.
It would, however, be misleading to suggest that, because many pilgrims worked for the love of God, all the workers were unpaid. We hear of occasions when money failed and
‘Ne porent pas païer assez
Li mestre de l’œuvre aus ouvriers.’[59]
Such things as the Jubé, the porches and the rose windows, executed after elaborate consultations and under the supervision of the ‘master of work,’ were inspected again by a clever master from another country. The chief workers were lodged in houses of the cloister belonging to the Chapter, who granted them doles from time to time and furnished them yearly with gloves and a mantle.
The naïveté of the mediæval artists is one of their chief charms, but there is often a spice of wickedness in their work. Read the fabliaux and mysteries of the time, from the Bible of Guyot de Provins to the play acted on the Piazza of Troyes in 1475, and you will find passages enough that offend the taste and are worthy of the actors in the Feast of Fools. The satire of the Trouvères, whether they are scourging monks, barons or sovereign pontiffs, is often extremely gross. Similarly, while the Count of Chartres was chanting in chivalrous fashion the praises of his lady, the porches of the Cathedral were receiving into their niches here and there the representations of certain ugly vices and their punishment, such as Dante ere long was to translate into the harmonious verses of his Divina Commedia. Fallen nuns and erring queens are delivered over to grinning demons, and Satan rubs his hands at the sight of his innumerable victims (south porch). S. Augustin might protest against the apocryphal Scriptures, and Popes denounce the legendary poetry of the early centuries, but painters persisted in depicting with excessive freedom the histories of S. Thomas and S. James, and sculptors still waxed wanton when they carved the sins of the Prodigal Son. S. Bernard, the enigma of his age, was constrained to cry out against the grotesque ornamentation of the churches.
But it is not the mere naughtiness of some satirical mason giving expression to the humour of the people which accounts for all the mediæval grotesques—for the Imp of Lincoln, the Noah of Bourges, the Devils of Notre-Dame-de-Paris, the Ass of Chartres. Vices were portrayed in order to illustrate their punishment. ‘Let faithful souls but see the Passion of Our Lord represented,’ says an old writer, ‘and rarely will they fail to be filled with compunction and to raise their eyes to heaven.’ To the impressionable, childlike, illiterate men of the Middle Ages, accordingly, the clergy taught the lessons of dogma and belief through the personages of drama or the medium of art. The sculpted bays of a porch or the storied windows of a nave were a lesson for the ignorant, a sermon for the believer, appealing through the eyes to the heart. The representation of the mysteries and miracle plays showed to him in action and helped him to realise the persons whose figures were already familiar to him as painted on glass, sculptured on capitals, incrusted on the vaulting of the doors. Graphic and dramatic art constituted the books of those who did not know how to read. With the aid of these material objects, as the Abbot Suger, the great artist of S. Denis, declared,[60] the feeble spirit can mount to the truth and the soul which was plunged in darkness rise to the light which bursts upon its terrestrial eyes. We need not wonder then if the paintings of the Middle Ages have not always the severity of modern ecclesiastical art, for vices were portrayed with a view to condemning them the more thoroughly. The mediæval masons were strangers, it would seem, to the legend of Spinello. Evil for them was always ugly, and the Devil a monster, not Lucifer.
But at Chartres this side of life is not dealt with overmuch. The bases of the pillars of the bays in the south and the western porches give some examples of
